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I Think For The Foreseeable Future, The Truth Is Going To Be Awful And Funny All At The Same Time.
-John Hodgman
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I Think For The

John Hodgman
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I Think For The Foreseeable Future, The Truth Is Going To Be Awful And Funny All At The Same Time.

Understanding the Quote: "i think for the foreseeable future, the truth is going to be..."

This quote by John Hodgman reflects deeply on the theme of thinking. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Thinking, Awful, Truth Is, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how John Hodgman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About John Hodgman

John Hodgman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on thinking and awful. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Thinking
Awful
Truth Is
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I Have An Unfortunate Compulsion. I Really Would Rather Not Do It, As It Is Very Nerve-wracking And Un-fun. But When It Works, There Is Nothing Like It.
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I Still Have A Fondness For Books. Many A Time I Will Be Antiquing, And I'll Say, 'what's That Old-timey Curio Over There? What Is That, A Candlestick Telephone, One Of Those Old Pull-chain Toilets? Oh No, It's A Book. I Used To Help Make Those Things! I Will Buy It And Use It To Decorate My Chain Of Casual Family-dining Restaurants.
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I Am Someone Who Values Truth - Actual Truth As Opposed To "truthiness." I Am Also Someone Who Has Been Trained In Deconstruction In The Literary Theory Department Of Yale University, So I Am Someone Who Is Tempted To Believe That No Absolute Truth Is Possible.
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Part Of The Transaction Between Writer And Reader Is The Pleasure Of Building A Community And Encouraging People To Play Along.
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I Would Say 70 Percent Of People Who Are In Therapy Are In Therapy Not Because Of Their Upbringing, Not Because Of Their Mean Sister Or Obsessions, But Because Of Anxiety Brought About By Lack Of Financial Security.
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Writing For Me Always Requires Trickery. Tricking Myself Into Sitting Down, Letting Words Tumble Out Until You Find The Good Ones. It's Sort Of A Trance. And When A Piece Is Done, I Have Little Memory Of How I Wrote It, And Zero Confidence I'd Ever Be Able To Do It Again.
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I'm Not Sure If That Answers The Question And I Have Absolutely No Problem With Any Major World Religion On Earth.
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I Naturally Own A Lot Of Very Old Magazines. And I Enjoy Going To Old Magazines Because The Advertisements In Those Magazines Tended To Have Thousands Of Words Of Copy In Them.
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Life May Be Miraculous In Its Unlikelihood In The Universe, But It Would Be A Fallacy To Suggest That Its Rareness Makes It Inextinguishable.
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There Is No Metaphor For Death. All Comparisons Are Odious, But I'll Do One Anyway. We All Have These Moments Of Harsh Clarity Where We Realize That Something Is Gone, Whether That Is Youth, Whether That Is Someone We Care About, Whether That Is Where We Literally Lose Someone We Care About To Death. Or We End A Relationship That We Thought Would Last Forever, Or Have One Ended For Us. We All Have These Moments In Life Where It Seems Impossible To Fill Up The Time That We Have Left For Us, And Yet We Have To Do It Somehow.
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I Don't Really Collect Anything. I Mean, If I See A Piece Of Moxie Soda Memorabilia, I'll Probably Buy It. I'm A Sucker For Regional Soda Brands And Forgotten Histories And That Sort Of Thing.
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I've Made My Evolutionary Purpose And Had Children. I Don't Care If Anybody Likes Me, I'm Going To Do What I Want To Do. I'm Going To Do A Whole Comedy Show About Swimming In The Loathsomely Cold Waters Of Maine.
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I've Only Ever Been Mistaken For Myself. People Draw A Lot Of Comparisons To All Of The Round-faced, Mustached Men Of Entertainment That Make Me Cringe And Sick To My Stomach About How The World Really Sees Me And They're Right.
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John Wilkes Booth And Lee Harvey Oswald Meet In Hell And Team Up To Assassinate Satan.
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To Want To Become The President Is, I Think, Such A Bizarre Ambition That It Is Automatically Deranging.
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I Am A Marginally Employed Person Who Can Escape With My School Teacher Wife To The Waters Of Maine For Much Of The Summer.
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One Can Always Come Up With Funny Lists And Jokes. You Know What? I Take It Back. Not Everyone Can Always Come Up With Funny Lists And Some Jokes. I'm Very Lucky To Have A Gift Where I Can Do That Pretty Ably.
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Anyone Of Conscience Could Come Look At My Book And See It As An Esoteric Oddity Or Be Intrigued By It. It Could Happen Either Way On A Thousand Different Little Decisions Each Individual Might Make.
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A Stopped Clock Is Correct Twice A Day, But A Sundial Can Be Used To Stab Someone, Even At Nighttime.
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I Believe That The Federal Government Should Be Laying Down Broadband Like Eisenhower Laid Down Interstates.
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I Don't Care If I Tell That Story And John Roderick Gets Up Afterward And Yells, 'i Hope You Enjoyed The White Privilege, Mortality Comedy Of John Hodgman!' That's Me!" I'm Going To Play A Sad Handsome Family Song At The End And I Guarantee You Everyone Is Going To Love It Because, Sometimes, You Need A Grown Man Or Woman To Tell You What You Like.
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What I've Discovered More Recently Is Copies Of Books That I Didn't Represent, But That My Boss Represented When I Assisted Her On The Dollar Pile. I Won't Mention Any Names, But It Is This Profoundly Bittersweet Time Of Realizing, "oh, I Had A Wonderful Time Working On This Book And Now It Is A Dollar Relic On The Side Of The Road."
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Do Not Listen To The Killjoys Who Tell You Never To Eat Oysters In Months That Do Not Contain The Letter R: May, June, July, August, Octoba. You Know.
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I Believe That By Releasing "passing Interest/low Keepsake-value Literature" From The Burden Of Physicality, You Are Actually Releasing The Words From Their Worst Liability: The Price And Inconvenience Of Actual Bookness.
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Literature
Burden
I Really Wouldn't Censor Myself. But Because It Was On Such A Slower Scale, I Would Throw Things Out, And I Indulged The Personal Stuff As Little Flashes Of Truth. Little In-jokes For Anyone Who Was Paying Particular Attention.
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Littles
Stuff
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Mean
Doe
Global Warming
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Understanding
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I Am Not A Villain.i'm An Only-child Narcissist Monster, But I Wish No Ill, Nor Do I Wish For World Domination; What A Hassle That Would Be!
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Wish
Monsters
You Wouldn't Want To Live A Life In Which You Are Loved Or Approved By All People On Earth Or Even Within Your Own Geodetic Dome Full Of Your Jumpsuited Followers.
People
Followers
Earth
My Career As A Magazine Writer Was Largely Prefaced On The Idea Of Curiosity, To Go On Adventures And Weasel My Way Into The Lives Of People That I Admire.
Adventure
Careers
Ideas
When A Good Friend Gives You His Or Her Book, You Don't Want To Read It, Because You're Afraid That It's Not Going Be What You Hope It Can Be.
Book
Good Friend
Giving
I Do Not Think That A Museum Needs To Engage With Pop Culture In Order To Make Itself Interesting To Museumgoers. Museums Are Already Interesting And Engaging With Pop Culture For Its Own Sake Is Just A Quick Way To Seem And Become Dated.
Thinking
Order
Museums
I Think For The Foreseeable Future, The Truth Is Going To Be Awful And Funny All At The Same Time.
Thinking
Awful
Truth Is
More People Have More Access To More Readers For Less Money Than Ever Before In History. It Means A Lot Of Dross; But It Means A Lot Of Very Talented People Can Find And Nurture A Readership In Ways That Were Not Possible Twenty Years Ago. From A Creative Perspective, That Is All That Writing Is About.
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Mean
Years
Traffic Counting Was Very Boring And Cold To Sit Out On The Streets Of New Haven In Five Pairs Of Pants - Well, That's An Exaggeration; It Was Three Pairs Of Pants - In November For Hours And Hours Clicking Buttons Counting Which Cars Go Left, Right, And Forward.
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Three
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Museums
Amusing
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Reality
Interesting
What I Collect? Interesting Jobs. Always To My Thrill And Excitement, But Ultimately To My Exhaustion, I Collect Interesting Jobs. If An Interesting Job Comes Along, I Take It; That's Why I Do So Many Things. I'm Lucky To Be Able To.
Jobs
Interesting
Lucky
Everyone Wants To Write A Book. Very Few People Are Able To Do It.
Book
Writing
People
It Would Be Rather Naive To Imagine That Oprah Doesn't Have An Earth Evacuation Plan. You Know Richard Branson Does - His Is In Plain Sight.
Sight
Doe
Would Be
I Am Not An Internet Superstar. I Am, Ironically Perhaps, The Most Old Media Superstar Of All Time. My Fame Is Due To Broadcast Television.
Media
Television
Superstar
I'm A Personality - Like A George Plimpton Who Effectively Plays Himself In A Bunch Of Different Roles, Or A Paul Lynde-type Character.
Character
Play
Personality
I Never Stopped Feeling Abject Terror Until I Got On Television And Went On A National Ad Campaign And Realized, "i Will Be Able To Feed My Children. I Have Somehow Averted The Destiny That Awaited Me, Which Is Endless, Crippling Debt Forever."
Children
Destiny
Forever
Stories Hold Power Because They Convey The Illusion That Life Has Purpose And Direction. Where God Is Absent From The Lives Of All But The Most Blessed, The Writer, Of All People, Replaces That Ordering Principle. Stories Make Sense When So Much Around Us Is Senseless, And Perhaps What Makes Them Most Comforting Is That, While Life Goes On And Pain Goes On, Stories Do Us The Favor Of Ending.
Pain
Blessed
People
One Of The Things About Crowd Work That's So Exciting Is When You Discover A Character In The Audience Who's Interesting Or Funny, Who You Can Vibe Off Of. If Someone's Got A Weird Job That You Can Make Reference To Throughout, Or You Can Bring That Person Onstage - Humiliate Them, Or Celebrate Them! You Can Put People In Conversation With One Another. The Best Is When Something That They're Doing Can Reflect Back On Something That You're Doing.
Jobs
Character
People
Everything We Make In Life, Eventually, Is Sold For A Dollar Or A Penny Or Given Away.
Dollars
Pennies
Given
Sports Is A Bloodless Rehearsal Of Confrontation, And Everyone Shakes Hands Or High Fives Or Fist Bumps At The End To Show That Everything Is Okay.
Sports
Confrontation
Okay
I Have No Skills. I Mean, I Can Make Jokes, I'm Pretty Good At Talking To People On The Judge John Hodgman Podcast. I Can Figure Out What Makes A Pretty Good Story, And I Can Make Eggs Really Well.
Mean
Talking
Skills
The Reality Is That If You Want To Be In A Reality-based Community, You've Got To Respect Reality And That Means Calling It Bad When You See The Past Ahead And It Doesn't Look Good And Acknowledging When It's Going To Work.
Mean
Past
Reality
I Navigated The World As A Hedge Maze Of Constant Fear And Worry In Which I Might Take The Wrong Turn And Jeopardize The Love Of Everyone Around Me And Everyone On Earth. That's What I Needed In Order To Survive.
Worry
World
Earth
You Are Only Pretentious If You Are Not Sincere.
Sincere
Pretentious
Ifs
This Is One Of The Defining Sorrows Of Books: That We Cannot See One Another.
Book
Sorrow
Defining
So I Am A Product Of The Internet, And To Some Degree A Product Of This Sensibility Of Constant Cultural Reference.
Degrees
Internet
Constant
It’s Been A Tough Couple Of Years For Condescending Nerds. And If Bookstores Fall, Jon, America Will Be Inundated With A Wandering, Snarky Underclass Of Unemployable Purveyors Of Useless And Arcane Esoterica.
Couple
Fall
Years
You Know, I Began My Life As A Creative Person Writing True Things For Magazines And Telling Some Very Honest, Straightforward Personal Essaying For This American Life, But Until Someone Forces You, With A Deadline, To Really Observe Your Life - Unless You're Motivated To Do It Yourself - There's So Many Stories That You Miss.
Writing
Creative
Missing
All I Can Ask From Society Is That It Please Stop Telling Me Why I Should Like Sports.
Sports
Should
Please
Even In My Own Life, There Are Memories I Have That Are Difficult To Explain - Happenings That Are So Odd And Unaccountably Weird, That It Is Difficult To Imagine They Were Not The Result Of Prolonged And Frequent Contact With Aliens Throughout My Life.
Memories
Motivation
Inspiration
I Would Be Good For Maybe Not The Center Square But An Upper Square On 'hollywood Squares.'
Squares
Would Be
Hollywood
I'm An Older, Wall-eyed, Overweight, Tweedy Writer Who Has Been Lucky Enough To Be Asked To Play Various Iterations Of Himself In A Certain Realm Of Popular Cultutre. That Gives Me Great Joy And Excitement, But I Don't Go To The Media Saying, "and I'm Also The World's Greatest Actor."
Wall
Media
Play
Only The Nerds Will Save The Earth.
Nerd
Earth
Terry Gross Has Never Had Me On Her Show And You Know, It's Her Show; She Sets The Agenda And That's Not Hodgman. But I'll Still Listen To It.
Agendas
Gross
Shows
Unfortunately For Humanity, I've Gotten Into The Habit Of Providing My Own Closing Music For Shows By Singing A Song And Playing The Ukulele.
Song
Ukulele
Humanity
The Reality Is That There Is An Enormous Value To Gut-check Instinctive Decision-making In The World That Is Not Hampered By Reams And Reams Of Research And Complexity.
Reality
Decision
Research
This Is Not To Say There Are Not Chicagoans. But I Would Suggest That They Are A Nomadic People, Whose Lost Home Exists Only In Their Minds, And In The Glowing Crystal Memory Cells They All Carry In The Palms Of Their Hands: A Great Idea Of A Second City, Lit With Life And Love, Reasonable Drink Prices At Cool Bars, And, Of Course, Blocks And Blocks Of Bright And Devastating Fire.
Memories
Life And Love
Block
I Realized That Even In A World Of Proliferating Media Venues, Online And In Print, And On Tv And On Countless Cable Channels, The Idea That I Could Be Considered An Expert On Chronic Knee Pain Was I Think Troubling For Society, But Very Exciting For Me.
Pain
Thinking
Ideas
I Used To Enjoy The Anonymity Of Being A Literary Figure And Occasionally A Public Radio Figure.
Radio
Used
Figures
If You Have Not Seen It, Football Is A Game In Which Men Shove One Another Back And Forth For No Reason. They Do Not Choose How, When, Or Whom They Shove. They Are Doing This In Order To Please One Angry Old Man On The Sidelines. This Old Man Is Called The 'coach' Or 'yelling Surrogate' Dad Who Will Never Be Happy.
Football
Dad
Men
People Like What They Like. They're Gonna Do What They're Gonna Do.
People
That Which Is Hard To Do Is Best Done Bitterly.
Done
Hard
I Am Someone Who Values Knowledge, Actual Knowledge. I Also Value Stories And Fiction A Whole Lot, And That's Where The Fake Knowledge Comes In.
Fake
Fiction
Stories
I Would Definitely Make Eggs For The Rest Of My Life If I Could.
Eggs
Breastfeeding
Thighs
We Have All Been Empowered By The Web: Everyone With A Keyboard Can Now Effectively Broadcast To A National Audience. In A Sense, It Puts Each Of Us On The Same Footing As The Major Media Conglomerates, Except For Aol, Who Now Apparently Own All Our Thoughts And Teeth.
Media
Teeth
Keyboards
I Think There Are Very Few Invisible Musical Instrument Players Out There Who Can Claim The Chops And Sheer Perseverance Of Björn Türoque, The World's Perennial Second-place Air Guitar Champion. Whoever This Dan Crane Might Be, He's Captured The Mad, Seductive Spirit Of The Arbitrary Skill Contest Perfectly, And Rocks It Hard Into The Hot Finnish Night. There Is No Number Of Umlauts That Do This Jekyll And Hyde Of Air-rocking Justice.
Perseverance
Player
Night
It Seems That Every Generation Needs Its Public, Tweedy, Literary Personality To Sell Its Consumer Electronics. To Whatever Degree I Can Live Up To The Plimptonian Legacy, I Am Humble And Proud.
Humble
Personality
Degrees
We Cannot Wholly Rely, As Though It Were Medieval Times, [on The Notion That] The Only Reality Is What We See In Front Of Us. There Are Germs. There Are Changes That Are Happening In Our Planet's Ecology That Are Happening Over Such A Long Period Of Time That We Cannot See The Changes.
Reality
Long
Germs
I Made An Impulse Buy Of A House In Maine To Make My Wife Happy And Now Have Gone Back Into Debt And It's All Started Over For Me.
Wife
House
Gone
Generally Speaking, I Think It Is Fair To Say That I Am A Friend To The Creatures Of The Earth When I Am Not Busy Eating Them Or Wearing Them.
Thinking
Earth
Busy
I Don't Know If You've Ever Been Shoved Into The Bow Of A Nutshell Pram, A Boat That Is Very Easily Almost Liftable With One Hand, And Quite Tippy, And Is Being Piloted By A 12-year-old, But It Is The True Feeling Of Having Your Life In Someone Else's Hands, And It's Very Precarious.
Feelings
Boat
True Feelings
The Villain Of Any Story Is Often The Most Compelling Character.
Character
Stories
Villain
Trending Author
Ray Bradbury
Teri Hatcher
Antonio Gaudi
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Emma Forrest
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